


Curious Cake

by ncruuk



Series: Cake [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 01:54:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11773053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncruuk/pseuds/ncruuk
Summary: Very little at UNIT is ever exactly like it seems at first glance....even cake attracts curiosity.[A one-shot in my UNIT-verse, however it will make more sense and be less surreal the more of my stories you have read - 'Greyhounds and Question Marks' is probably the most useful if you need a crash course refresher!]





	Curious Cake

**Author's Note:**

> There are things in here (besides the Dr Who characters) that are not mine...and I have only borrowed them to help tell this story. Proper disclaimers/notes are at the end to not spoil the story from the outset.  
> [ My Kate/Osgood UNIT-verse reader's guide ](http://ncruuk.tumblr.com/post/153132349737/ncruuks-kateosgood-fics-a-readers-guide) is worth a visit if you're new to my UNIT stories (or just want a refresher!).  
> Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy...

“Er, am I in the right place?”  Tabitha ‘Tabby’ Groenwald had been working for UNIT long enough to now know that, if she didn’t want to be accidentally scorched, soaked, dyed some fascinating colour (occasionally with not so optional sparkly bits), have her density altered so she floated or just generally rendered speechless, it was usually best to enter meeting rooms with some degree of caution.

 

“Yes dear.”  Rosie, or Dr Ethel Onurosie as Tabby still thought of her on account of not working for UNIT long enough to presume that the somewhat eccentric, often grumpy and generally brilliant elderly scientist considered her ‘friendly’, looked up from the article she was reading.  “We’re just not as late as everyone else.”

 

“Ah…”  Not quite sure what else to say, Tabby entered the meeting room fully and tried to look like she wasn’t still somewhat shocked that she really was working in a world where aliens existed and the Tower of London had a top secret labyrinth underneath full of things she still couldn’t reproduce in her wildest dreams.  “Is that…”

 

“Cake?”  Rosie looked from Tabby to the centre of the table.  “Yes.”  Remembering the incident that had seen her first meet the HR Director, Rosie looked at the now not sparkly woman and smiled.  “And I promise you, it’s just cake….Mars Bar flavoured obviously.”

 

“Mars Bar cake?”  Still viewing the cake with a degree of mistrust, Tabby sat down opposite Rosie and frowned.  “Is that really a thing?”  She wasn’t sure she could ask why ‘obviously’ applied.

 

“Is what a thing?” asked Osgood, appearing in the doorway just in time to hear Tabby’s question.

 

“Mars Bar Cake…”  Tabby gestured towards the cake, wondering whether she was starting to become paranoid about everything potentially being a camouflaged alien something, although she couldn’t work out why they had cake in Kate Stewart’s weekly team meeting this week either.  “...as in cake made with the chocolate bars?”

 

“Yes…”  Osgood took a final noisy bite of her apple, chewing and swallowing while she found the bin and neatly deposited her core in a discarded paper cup.  “...good, but not as good as Toblerone…”

 

“She still makes that then?” asked Rosie, remembering teaching a much younger Kate and Freddie how to make easy cakes and cheesecakes using chocolate bars as shortcuts to save on the washing up and general kitchen time when you had a small child underfoot at the same time.

 

“Hmm?”  Momentarily confused, Osgood spun round and adjusted her glasses, nearly missing Rosie’s question in her desire for a decent cup of coffee.  “Oh, yes…”  Remembering Tabby and deciding there was no reason to deliberately exclude her from following the conversation, Osgood provided a slightly more expansive answer.  “...Kate still makes Toblerone cheesecake...it’s my favourite.”  She started to turn back to the coffee machine only to pause and look thoughtfully at Rosie.  “How did…”

 

“She gave me the recipe…”  Kate dumped her briefcase, stack of papers and raincoat on the end of the table and continued on to join Osgood in the hunt for coffee.  “...Gordy was…”  Kate thought for a moment while automatically reaching around her girlfriend for a mug, hoping Os would take the hint and having made her own cup, make another for Kate.  “Three?  Four at most.  He didn’t like cheesecake but loved the mousse cake version…”  Kate bit her lip to stop herself smiling too broadly when she saw Osgood’s nose wrinkle - she had never really understood how Os could love cheesecake but detest mousses.  “...thanks…”  She swapped her empty mug for the full one Osgood just passed her, uninterested in starting the meeting until she’d recovered from the rush across Central London and solved the mystery of the cake discussion.  “How did we get on to Rosie’s cake baking superpower?”

 

“Mars Bar Cake…”  Osgood looked over her shoulder at Kate and tilted her head towards the table.

 

“...which I didn’t know was a thing…” continued Tabby, smiling at Maria Walsh as, presumably alerted by Ops to Kate’s return to the Tower, she entered the room already carrying her own large thermal coffee mug.

 

“Oh, is that today?”  Maria nodded in greeting to everyone and moved over to sit down next to Rosie, seeing the cake in the centre of the table.

 

“We’re doing it today…” confirmed Fran, Kate’s PA as she appeared in the other doorway holding a small stack of plates and napkins, a handful of forks tucked in her jacket pocket.  “...it was technically last week but…” she looked apologetically at Tabby.  “...some of us were a bit sparkly still…”

 

“Were there side effects?  I don’t remember reading about that in the report…”  Kate was now sitting down, having unceremoniously dumping her briefcase and coat on the floor vaguely near the wall and was trying to find the page of the previous meeting’s papers that she’d scribbled what she wanted to mention in this meeting on.

 

“No side effects…”  Rosie glared at her former student, amazed that someone so diplomatic and experienced could also be so skilled at missing the obvious at times. “...but Iso-two doesn’t yet have an en-suite microwave nevermind an Aga and food processor so there was no cake…” It only just had comfortable chairs, and that was because Rosie had insisted that some be found - if she was going to spend eighteen hours working out why their HR Director was suddenly decorated with sparkling green stripes, she was going to sit on something that didn’t resemble a torture device.

 

“Ah.”  Kate paused in her paper hunting, deciding she’d just have to do without her notes and looked up, taking in the rather curious mix of expressions on her friends and colleagues’ faces.  “Maria please hiccup or laugh before you explode, Rosie I know you called me something rude so stop trying to look innocent, Tabby I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s alright…”  Tabby was sufficiently recovered from her sparkly interlude to be able to see the funny side now and she had been glad of Dr Onurosie’s insistence that she’d work out how to de-sparkle Tabby before letting anyone else work out why only Tabby had ended up with green stripes and sparkles on her face and hands when everyone else just got the stripes.  “...but I still don’t understand why we’ve got chocolate cake.”  Nor did they understand why she’d been the only sparkly one, although there was the UNIT equivalent of a ‘meme’ starting to provide a number of amusing suggestions.

 

“Not ‘chocolate cake’,” corrected Maria, recovering from her hiccups - she knew it wasn’t very ‘Colonel-esque’ but she’d not realised that the elderly scientist had mastered some of the more colourful ways of being sarcastic Welsh, nevermind direct them at Greyhound One, “... _ Mars  _ bar cake.”

 

“Mars Bar  _ Birthday _ cake…” added Fran, producing the candles that she’d also brought.  “How many?” she asked Osgood, who was mid coffee-sip but, after a moment’s thought, held up all five digits of her left hand.

 

“As in the planet?”  Tabby was even more confused.  “But isn’t that a bit….local?”  She’d been trying to master her Universe geography since joining UNIT but was still a bit unclear on what direction things were in at any given moment since North/South/East/West were about as useful as...a very unhelpful thing.  Distance however was easier to cope with, with most places and aliens coming from outside the Solar System.  “And young?”

 

“Curiosity?”  This time it was Kate’s turn to try and help Tabby’s confusion, only to see she’d just made it worse for the HR Director.  “It’s…”

 

“A widespread killer of cats?”  Tabby was relieved when her sudden blurted out attempt at a joke had amused her boss rather than irritated her given she was already asking lots of questions.

 

“...and the name of the NASA rover exploring Mars…” continued Kate as if she hadn’t interrupted.  “...which landed on Mars five years ago last week.”

 

“So this is a birthday cake for a science lab on another planet?”

 

“Pretty much.”  Satisfied with Tabby’s summary, Kate looked hopefully at Fran, conscious her stomach was going to start demanding cake if this conversation continued much longer - budget cuts were apparently only being seriously adhered to by the Whitehall biscuit and sandwich buyers.  “I think Tabby should have the honour…” she suggested, once Fran had finished putting in the five bright candles and had accepted the offer of a box of matches that Maria had found in one of her pockets.

 

“I don’t sing.”  She couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, nevermind consider singing ‘Happy Birthday’ in front of her colleagues and boss.

 

“Neither do we - but you can blow out the candles…” explained Rosie, pushing her chair back slightly so there was space for Tabby to come round and stand in the space created so that she could hopefully blow out the candles before they set off the sprinklers.  “...the singing was last week, on Curiosity’s birthday.”

 

“Oh?”  Intrigued, Tabby obediently got up and moved around to the other side of the table so she was ready to blow out the candles once Fran had lit them.  “Who sang?”

 

“Curiosity...”  Osgood’s ‘of course’ was unspoken but accidentally deafening in its tone and very nearly killed the (Tabby) cat - it really was nothing personal, but her apple had only served to remind her she hadn’t yet had lunch...and although it wasn’t Toblerone Cheesecake, Mars Bar Cake was a more than adequate substitute.

 

“The science lab on Mars?”  Fortunately, Tabby had spent enough time in meetings with Osgood to recognise this was accidental ‘tone’ rather than the scientist actually meaning to be grumpy.  “Why would NASA send a singing science lab?”  Was this the moment she was about to be told that yes, despite everything she’d been led to believe, there really was life on Mars after all?

 

“They didn’t, not exactly…”  Maria stood up to give Tabby and Fran a bit of space, deciding also that she was probably the best person to give her fellow non-scientist a short and comprehensible summary.  “...they sent a science lab that has equipment on it which makes humming type noises to Mars.  Give some experiment on the rover a particular set of instructions and tasks and the set of hums it generates makes it ‘sing’ a tune.  Personally I’d have gone for Bowie...”

 

“Life on Mars?”  Kate appreciated Maria’s humour as she watched Tabby blow out the candles, slightly disappointed that Fran hadn’t got the self-relighting candles this time, although it probably was the more responsible thing to do given their recent sprinkler issues courtesy of Chem-3’s experiments and there being no umbrellas to hand.  “Good choice.”

 

“We thought of that…”  Osgood took her glasses off and started polishing them once she’d watched Tabby blow out the candles, thus completely missing the look of surprise exchanged at her unexpected revelation - everyone knew she’d never worked for NASA but only Kate had known Osgood had occasionally contributed to various projects during her pre UNIT career.  “...but to make the tune distinct and obvious the analyser had to run too long and risked component damage.”  She put her glasses back on.  “Happy Birthday was easier.”

 

“Ah…”  Tabby moved back to her chair, trying to picture a little space buggy humming to itself on an otherwise lifeless planet and briefly thought about challenging Osgood’s definition of relative ease before changing her mind.  “A bit lonely though?”

 

“The official explanation is about celebrating humanity’s inventiveness and the unifying nature of song…” began Kate, accepting the plate with a piece of cake on it when Rosie passed it down to her.  “...thanks.”

 

“And unofficially?”  Rosie knew Kate well enough to recognise when there was an ‘unofficially’ worth going fishing for.  “No one’s told me about an unofficially….” she prompted pointedly when Kate was about to eat another large forkful of the cake, a forkful that returned to the blonde’s plate, all too familiar with her former lecturer’s ‘answer the question now’ voice.

 

“Unofficially, the Yurtapi and Roqurting Ambassadors presented compliments.”  The diplomatically correct answer enabled Kate to resume her cake eating.  Unfortunately, it didn’t really answer Rosie’s question so, after a brief pause while everyone started on their slice of birthday cake, Kate continued.  “Tronkie threw a party, Bergamoe - she’s the only Ambassador I know who can pull off lavender while clashing with the landscape…”

 

“She’s also the only furry Ambassador you know…” corrected Osgood, having to unwind her scarf so she didn’t get it covered in cake crumbs. “...and the magenta was...brighter.”

 

“Fair point.”  Acknowledging her girlfriend’s point with her fork, Kate picked up the story again.  “...Bergamoe invested Curiosity into the Yurtapi equivalent of the Order of the Garter, I think it’s the Order of the local equivalent of the guinea pig actually, and the Doctor popped by as well.  They took some photos to mark the occasion - the Doctor had a sequined Fez which matched Tronkie’s ceremonial tunic.”  Kate caught a couple of crumbs that were in danger of making a mark on her shirt front.  “He was rather taken with it, the Fez I mean…”  Kate exchanged a glance with Fran who correctly interpreted that as an instruction to find out how they could get one for Tronkie’s Christmas present.

 

“I take it NASA don’t know about that?” asked Maria, not having heard that part of the story before.

 

“The sequined Fez?”

 

“The birthday party.”  It was tempting to repeat Rosie’s muttered and fundamentally affectionate Welsh comment from a few minutes earlier, but Maria quite enjoyed being a Colonel and wasn’t entirely confident she’d remain one if she did repeat it,  no matter how lyrical or affectionate insult was, so she didn’t.

 

“No.”  Deciding they really should start the meeting, Kate put her now empty cake plate to one side.  “They don’t know about the annual snowball fight on Uranus either…which reminds me, how’s the sign-up for the inter-departmental cricket tournament?  Are Geneva still insisting it’s their turn to host?  Their wicket is not a patch on Lord’s...”  

 

And, with a few chocolate-flavoured cake crumbs scattered across the table the only immediate reminder of the recent Martian birthday celebrations, they turned their attention to all things UNIT…

 

...while thousands of miles away, on a red planet, Curiosity hummed away as samples were analysed and data collected, a small sparkly decoration that looked quite a bit like a guinea pig perched securely on the one corner of the rover that its sensors couldn’t ‘see’, proof that for one birthday party at least, Life really was on Mars….

**Author's Note:**

> The Curiosity Rover Sample Analysis on Mars (SAM) vibrates soil samples, generating hums at various pitches when it works. Scientists put together the right sequence of vibration instructions so the 'hum' sings Happy Birthday. They then instructed SAM to execute this sequence on the anniversary of the Curiosity Rover's Mars touchdown (August 5th) - there's a great video/article about it [ here ](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/08/06/lonely-curiosity-rover-sings-happy-birthday-to-itself-on-mars/?utm_term=.b9108b06dc9e), as well as various posts about it on tumblr and twitter etc. Osgood's involvement in the project is, of course, entirely fictitious and all credit goes to the actual scientists and engineers at NASA....and as for 'Life on Mars' - fabulous song by David Bowie and I've no idea if it's possible or not for the SAM to 'play' it!
> 
> Thanks for reading :-)


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